Deep Fire Rising Read online

  Mercer recoiled. He hadn’t realized that Randall did indeed know who he was.

  Donny laughed, misunderstanding Mercer’s movement. “Next time you want a lesson on mining, you come and ask me and I’ll tell you how it’s done.” The animal hatred flashed in his eyes once more and he poked a hardened finger into Mercer’s chest. “And the next time you question my ability you’d damn well better be right, because if you’re wrong again I’m going to beat you to an inch of your life. You hearing me?”

  Mercer didn’t consider the eighty pounds of weight or six inches of height he was giving to Randall. That wasn’t even a factor. The only thing keeping him from snapping Donny’s finger was that the move would only anger the larger man and the subsequent fight would likely end up destroying the trailer.

  “I didn’t think you were as tough as I’d heard,” Donny scoffed with a dismissive toss of his pomaded hair. He was almost out the door when Mercer’s comment stopped him dead:

  “I was wrong about you, Donny. I apologize.”

  “That’s more like it.” Randall laughed.

  Mercer’s face remained expressionless. “You’re not only the dumbest son of a bitch I’ve ever known, but I’ve watched you checking out the other men here and realized you used a pick handle on those boys in Africa because you’re also the most sexually confused.”

  Randall blinked, the nature of the insult taking a few seconds to register. To Mercer it was almost as if he could watch the thoughts ricochet in his mind like a pinball bouncing from bumper to bumper. Just as his eyes widened in comprehension, Red Harding and a half dozen other men stepped into the trailer. They’d just completed their last sweep of the mine tailings and had no idea what they’d walked in on.

  Randall paused for another heartbeat before deciding to let this drop, but he gave Mercer a murderous look. As if Mercer didn’t already know it wouldn’t end there. He almost smiled at Donny’s transparency.

  “What was that all about?” Red asked after Donny had skulked into the night.

  “Just Donny expressing his disappointment about how I sullied his character.”

  “Come again?”

  Mercer chuckled. “Randall was just trying to prove he can piss farther than me.”

  “Gotcha,” the wiry Texan said. “We’re ready to place the remote seismograph. You’re going to need a hand.” He pointed at the monitor showing the camera’s view of the water stain. “The spot hasn’t grown since we first saw it, so I think we’ll be okay for a quick trip down.”

  The fact that water wasn’t continuing to seep through the rock quelled only part of Mercer’s uneasiness. He was more bothered now by the nature of the water, although he hadn’t said anything about it. He was going to stick by his original decision to keep men out of the mine for at least a day.

  “All right. You coming?”

  “Damn straight.”

  Mercer nodded his appreciation. “Get one other man. Meet me at the skip in ten minutes.”

  “You going to call Admiral Lasko?”

  Mercer reached for the encrypted satellite phone on the desk. “That’s next on my list.” He waited until the men had left the trailer before placing the call.

  “Lasko.”

  “Ira, Mercer. We hit water.”

  A stunned moment, then, “How bad?”

  “It just looks like a small patch of saturation. It’s not growing, nor is any water wicking through.”

  A sudden realization hit the deputy security advisor. “You guys haven’t broken into the chamber, have you?”

  “No. It looks like we’re still some twenty-eight feet shy, but the water seems to have expanded past its cavity, at least in this one patch.”

  “Ah, is this common?”

  “Hard to tell,” Mercer said after a moment. “It all depends on the water pressure, the permeability of the rock, how long the water’s been there—”

  “Why would that have anything to do with it?” Ira asked sharply.

  “Given a few million years water will seep through just about anything. Knowing how long ago the void in the earth was filled would give me an idea how fast the water’s moving.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I’ve got a camera monitoring the damp spot, and we’re about to place a portable seismograph to judge the rock’s stability.”

  “Good. How many men are down there now?”

  “None,” Mercer replied. “That’s one of the reasons I called. Until I get a better handle on this, I don’t want anyone working at the face.”

  Mercer expected a protest, but Ira agreed instead. “Good idea. For how long do you think? A couple of days?”

  “At least. The plug separating the tunnel from the reservoir is under strain, and until I can determine how safe it is, we can’t risk the men.”

  “Hold on a second, Mercer.” It sounded like Ira had clamped his hand over the phone’s receiver to speak with someone in his office.

  It was nine o’clock in D.C. Mercer wondered why Ira was working so late.

  “Okay, I’m back. There’s no sense you guys hanging around for two days, so I’m organizing helos to get you to the Area 51 air base. They’ll hold their regular personnel flight to Vegas for you. I’ve got someone working on getting you hotel rooms.”

  Mercer was grateful, and somewhat surprised Ira had had the same thought as he did earlier. Then again Ira was a master administrator and knew how to maintain peak performance from those under him. Forty-eight hours in Vegas was exactly what his men needed after months of continuous work. He laughed. “Just great. A few minutes ago the men thought I was the hero for giving them a few days off. No way I can top you sending them to Sin City.”

  “When you’re there,” Ira joked back, “you can pick up the tab at the strip joints they will no doubt visit.”

  The teasing tone evaporated on Mercer’s lips. “I’m not going with them. I want to stay and monitor the mine.”

  Ira’s reply carried the same seriousness. “You are going with them.”

  “Forget it,” Mercer said. “No offense to your hydrologists, but I’m the one in charge out here and I’m the one who has to be satisfied the tunnel is safe.”

  Ira’s smile resonated in his voice. “That’s why you and I are friends, Mercer. You’ll take responsibility even when you don’t need to. I’ve done that my entire life. Go to Vegas, for Christ’s sake. You can study the hydrology reports when you get back. You were hired to dig the tunnel, not oversee the entire project. Besides, I won’t be able to get Dr. Hood or Dr. Marie there until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “I don’t want anyone going into that mine,” Mercer cautioned. While his work made him an expert in hydrology, he conceded that Gregor Hood knew this area much better. Until his arrival, there wasn’t much for him to do except stare at computer monitors. And whether he was at the mine or in Las Vegas, nothing could stop water from bursting through the rock plug if it was already unstable.

  “I’ll order some guards to the site. No one goes in or out. Take a couple of days off. If we’re that close to the underground cavern, you guys have earned it.”

  “All right.” Mercer felt himself relaxing. “You win.”

  “Choppers will be there in half an hour. Only takes fifteen minutes by jet to fly from Area 51 to Vegas. Hold on.” Ira again clamped a hand over the phone to speak with someone in his office. “Okay, thanks. Mercer, you’re booked in the Luxor Hotel. Sorry it’s not a suite, but you’re traveling on the government’s nickel. I’ll try to get away from Washington and meet you when Drs. Hood and Marie arrive.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you in a couple days.” Mercer paused. “And if you tell Harry I’m in Vegas for two days, I will kill you.” On Harry White’s list of life’s priorities, he ranked gambling below smoking and drinking but above eating and showering. Mercer was already planning on calling him from his hotel to rub it in.

  Ira laughed. “There are practical jokes, and then there’s downright crue
lty. Your presence there is considered a national secret. You’re safe.”

  Mercer swiveled off his chair and started for the mine head. He remembered he wanted to tell Ira about the salinity in the water deposit, but figured it could wait until he talked it over with Gregor Hood. More than likely it meant nothing and he’d find the hydrologist had experience with similar abnormalities during his previous evaluation.

  Red was waiting with another miner, Ken Porter. At their feet was the seventy-pound armored case for the seismograph and its batteries. They heaved it by the handles and followed Mercer into the cage lift. No one spoke as the elevator dropped into the gloom. Normally miners whiled away the commute with jokes or games of dice on deeper shafts. For this descent they remained grim-faced and tense. They all understood the risks.

  At the substation, Red and Ken set the seismograph on a utility tractor as Mercer got into the low-slung bucket seat and engaged the electric drive. He continued a dialogue with the topside safety monitor, who was watching the camera for any changes at the working face. He stopped the tractor well before they reached the end of the tunnel, knowing that the slight vibration of the heavy tires on the rough ground could trigger a catastrophic collapse. From this point on, they moved with the careful deliberation of demolition experts defusing a bomb.

  Red and Ken lugged the seismograph, heads down under their burden. Mercer twisted his head in a steady rhythm so his lamp flashed on the floor, ceiling and walls. Their boots crunched on the debris-strewn tunnel.

  At the face, Mercer went straight to the damp spot, satisfying himself that the camera hadn’t lied. The stain seemed safely contained by his chalk outline.

  “Let’s get it planted and get out,” he said, straightening. He pointed to where he wanted the unit set.

  He and Red began the laborious process of calibrating the seismograph and jacking it into the same data cable carrying the camera images to the surface. Ken Porter spent the time scouring the rock for additional water spots that Mercer might have missed.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted suddenly, scrambling away from the working face.

  Mercer looked up. “What is it?”

  “UXB.”

  Mercer’s body went cold. UXB was an old term for unexploded bomb. Ken had found an explosive charge that hadn’t gone off with the others. He pointed to one of the two-inch holes Donny Randall’s team had drilled into the stone. At this angle Mercer couldn’t see into it, so he couldn’t tell that it was nearly ten feet deep. Ken had been right in front of it and had flashed his lamp down its length and saw the blue wrapper of the Tovex explosive.

  “Back away nice and easy,” Mercer cautioned in an even voice. Tovex was one of the most stable demolition charges on the market, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Ken took several steps back, his face ashen, his eyes glued to the black hole in the dark stone. He angled away from the mouth of the hole to get out of the potential blast radius and was twelve feet away when the charge blew.

  Because the drill hole hadn’t been repacked to contain the blast, the explosion came out like the exhaust of a rocket engine, a seething plasma of gas and flame that shot down the tunnel in an expanding plume. Ken had just gotten himself clear yet was still thrown a dozen feet by the concussion.

  Mercer and Red too were tossed back by the blast, neither able to hear the warning shouts of the other because their hearing had been nullified by the overwhelming detonation. Mercer was the first to get to his feet, swaying against the ringing in his ears. He began to rush to where Ken lay like a limp doll and pulled up short. What he saw in the wavering light of his helmet lamp defied description.

  Like a spreading pool of spilled ink, the area around the smoking hole darkened as he watched. Water under tremendous pressure was filling microvoids in the rock, oozing out almost like sweat from pores. At first the surface appeared merely damp and then began to glisten. In seconds, drops of water formed and began to trickle from the stone.

  The primitive part of his brain told him to forget the others and flee, but he fought the temptation. Keeping one eye on the impending flood he reached for Ken Porter, shouldering the unconscious miner in a fireman’s carry. Red Harding was up, staring at the water now spurting from the solid rock.

  “Let’s go!” Mercer screamed at the top of his lungs. His voice was deadened even in his own head.

  Red finally saw Mercer lurching toward him, shook himself of the shock and started loping down the tunnel. Behind them the water tore at the stone from behind, exploiting the tiniest cracks until it found the weakest spot. Like a liquid laser, a shaft of water shot from the drill hole, a two-inch diameter spear that hit the seismograph machine. For a moment the water exploded around the armored case in a roiling froth, but its power was too great to be deterred by such a puny obstacle. The heavy case began to slide across the floor, slowly at first, then accelerating. Red had a fifty-foot head start on the tumbling crate and it nearly bowled him over as the water jet propelled it like a projectile down the tunnel.

  The noise began to swell as the hole widened and more water gushed through. It was more powerful than any fire hose. Mercer knew if it somehow touched him the least that would happen was it would knock him flat. More likely, he realized as he ran, it would tear away whatever limb it encountered.

  They raced on, pursued by the relentless flood. The water level rose and waves pulsed down the drive so that two hundred feet from the working face they kicked up spray with every pace. After five hundred feet the water was up to their knees. Red looked at Mercer, reading in his eyes the determination to fight on despite the lengthening odds.

  Far behind them billions of tons of water tore at the rock, seeking release from its subterranean reservoir. The hole widened, allowing the flood to come through with such force that the stream remained airborne for fifty feet before the water column hit the tunnel floor. It swept past the utility tractor like a raging river, boiling around the four-ton vehicle until it too was dragged along in the torrent.

  With Ken slung over his shoulder, Mercer could barely keep up with Red, and yet the loyal Texan didn’t leave him behind. They ran in step, fighting side by side as water climbed up to their waists. The speed of the water pulled them along and threatened to tear their legs out from under them. Both knew that to fall was to die.

  After what seemed like an hour but was only eight minutes, Mercer saw the lights of the substation. He could even hear the water as it cascaded into the deep sump, a thunderous sound that shook the earth. He began to hope. If they could reach the skip, maybe they could be pulled out before whatever rock still damming the underground lake failed completely.

  It wouldn’t happen.

  There was just too much water, too much pressure. Rather than collapse in sections, the entire span of the tunnel, from floor to ceiling, failed at the same time. The wall of water hurtling down the tunnel filled every square inch of space, a solid barrier moving at forty miles an hour.

  Because water cannot be compressed, the collapse formed a pressure bulge that shot through the flood. Mercer and Red were caught totally unaware.

  Like a tsunami, the wave rushed over them in a near-solid sheet that left both men tumbling in its backwash. Mercer lost his grip on Ken Porter when he smashed against the wall, the precious last gulp of air he’d taken exploding from his lungs at the blow.

  He managed to right himself in the tumult and came up gasping. The black water settled to its earlier level and he staggered to his feet, knowing the massive surge had been a preview. Red surfaced a short distance away. His breathing was labored and he couldn’t focus his eyes. This time Mercer couldn’t deny his instincts. Searching for Ken meant he’d lose Harding for sure.

  He grabbed the smaller man by the back of his overalls to keep his head clear and charged down the tunnel like a rampaging animal. The flood had taken one man and he wouldn’t let it take another. He’d lost his helmet and its precious lamp in the swell so he focused on the distant
constellation of lights ringing the substation. A fierce wind howled past his shoulders, driven to hurricane force by the wall of water bearing down on him.

  Had the floor of the skip elevator not been an open mesh that allowed the water to vanish into the sump, the tunnel would have already flooded to the ceiling. However, this reprieve was double-edged. If Mercer and Red were caught in the cage when the main wave hit, their bodies would be diced against the heavy-gauge wire like cheese through a grater.

  He staggered the last steps into the substation and allowed the torrent to sweep him off his feet so that he and Red were carried into the elevator and pinned to the floor. From there, Mercer clawed his way to his knees, his throat aching from swallowing so much water, his eyes stinging from the salt. He slapped his palm against the UP button and fell back so he was facing the tunnel. The car began to lift, water sieving through the floor. Mercer barely noticed. Far down the drive, he saw the lights strung along the walls begin to wink out as they vanished behind the rampaging flood. Two hundred feet. One hundred. Fifty.

  The elevator had risen only three-quarters of the way above the tunnel.

  The tidal wave exploded into the wider substation, filling every corner as it sought freedom. As if sensing an outlet, the wall surged toward the elevator shaft. The carriage had just climbed clear when the water hit the back of the vertical passageway and geysered through the floor. Mercer and Red were lifted bodily, slammed against the mesh roof and pinned there for many long seconds until the elevator lifted them clear of the water’s grip. Both dropped to the floor, lying in pitiable heaps, bruised and dripping and unable to believe they were alive.

  Below them water thundered into the sump in a solid curtain that ran clear and green. A subterranean Niagara Falls.